5 Key Takeaways From Our “Optimization Strategies To Improve Collections” Webinar

Financial institutions must prioritize instilling empathy when interacting with their clients. It’s more critical now than ever because of the economic hardships many are facing due to COVID’s impact.

In our latest webinar, “Optimization Strategies to Improve Collections,” Scott Albahary, Perficient’s financial services chief strategist, and Byron Gifford, Perficient’s collection transformations lead, shared tangible solutions to the challenges collections and recoveries groups face.

Key Takeaways:

1. Developing a digital collections strategy that considers the customer’s past, present, and future state is a balancing act that requires a cross-functional approach.
2. Leveraging personas is key. This means that the more personalized the approach is when communicating with a customer, the better. Varying customer types need more than a “one-size-fits-all” approach and limited segmentation support. Additionally, the more an institution supplies customers with control over how they want to manage their account and be communicated with, the better the outcome from the customer.
3. Customer experience really matters in collections. The creditor who prioritizes the customer always gets paid first.
4. By focusing on journey science, artificial intelligence and machine learning, data and analytics, and interaction management, collections and recovery functions can be successfully modernized.
5. Optimal workflow design is critical to a collections group. Tips to optimize workflow design in collections include:
   1. Taking care to operate with a singular focus
   2. Developing a clear picture to the customer about how their payments will look moving forward
   3. Negotiation, being conscientious of the customer’s other financial obligations
   4. Recapping decisions made with the customer before ending the interaction.

Catch a recording of the webinar here, or watch it below, to get the specifics on how our “People, Process, and Tools” approach, which utilizes ideals from the takeaways above, has transformed the collections processes for financial services organizations.